


grief is just love with no place to go

by luckfoser



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Post-Birthright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 09:27:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12702048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckfoser/pseuds/luckfoser
Summary: Camilla deals with grief.





	grief is just love with no place to go

You don’t think you deserve grief, the first time you deal with it.

Grief, you think, should be reserved for the innocent; the implicated should have only their guilt. And so it doesn’t make sense to you that you feel grief for the lives you ended, but then again, you were a child, and children are far more complicated than most people give them credit for. And so it was that, though your mother insisted you stood to benefit from their deaths, you mourned those siblings that never even lived to see the war, and when you mourned them, you did it alone.

When your mother dies, you suppose you should grieve her—or at least, you’re  _ expected _ to grieve her—but that doesn’t happen and you’re not entirely sure why. Either way, Father doesn’t seem to, and he’s supposed to have loved her at least as much as you did.

For some time, you’re not entirely sure if you and Father are both heartless or if your mother was simply unlovable, but as father grows crueler you begin to lean towards the first possibility.

(Though perhaps this is simply because your mother, in retrospect, could have been worse; she could have kept living, but thankfully she was kind enough to die.)

For some time, then, grief would elude you, if only because all you had to mourn was the state of your kingdom, the cruelty of your father. In those years, though, you were never alone, and no amount of suffering seemed quite so hard to bear when you had your siblings near you, when you could distract from your own pain by helping them ease theirs, when you could watch them grow into their wonderful personalities.

That didn’t last as long as it should have.

When your sibling betrayed you, you didn’t quite know what to make of it. At the time, it simply didn’t seem to be reality to you; after all, whyever would your sibling leave? You had  _ plans _ for them, and those plans involved making up for all those years they spent in that wretched building Father put them in, and those plans were years in the making and detailed on a worn map tucked away close to your heart, and those plans were important because those plans would make them smile. No, they couldn’t be leaving—not on their own wishes.

Some might have called it delusion, and some may have very well called it hope, but either way, it was what kept you going when you fought against them. It helped to think that this time you were only fighting one of your siblings for  _ their _ sake, not your own. You wouldn’t have to think of your mother’s half-hearted reassurance, her insistence that it would help you. No, you were doing this for them. You were  _ saving _ them, even if they didn’t understand that.

And for a moment, you still love your sibling, because they take this misguided hope and redirect it, tell you that you can all be a family again, tell you that they’ll convince Xander to move towards peace, and of  _ course _ that’s why Elise went with them, the darling girl, and—

It is so hard to love your sibling.

But they need it, and old habits die hard. They need support, need help, need their family—though apparently not  _ all _ of their family—and you remind yourself periodically that they did bring you peace. They did. Hoshido and Nohr are no longer at war, after all. You remind yourself that Elise would want you to get along with them, and you remind yourself that Xander would be happy to see Nohr as it is now, and you try to forget what betrayal feels like.

It’s hard, but you make it happen.

You push away the crown when it should go to you. You were never quite as good at thinking logically as Leo was—the war proved that much—and a leader should be able to stay level-headed. Leo asks you if you’re certain, and you smile and tell him that you could think of no one better to take the throne.  

(No one else  _ alive _ , anyhow.)

If anyone thinks you’re lying when you say you’re doing well, and if anyone thinks your smile is ingenuine, they’re not brave enough to say so, and you prefer it that way. Some days Leo seems to hesitate, seems to want to ask you something before tossing the notion aside, and though you want dearly to tell him to speak his mind you know that he would only ask you to speak yours.

You remember how to grieve again; you grieve alone.

**Author's Note:**

> a bit short, but i wrote this for something and wanted to put it out there! hope you enjoyed reading!


End file.
